[more to come!]
Beverly Hills, CA

FRIDAY, November 17, 2023
12:00 noon

BYRD IS THE WYRD

BCSD launches the BCSD TWENTYONE Bach at Noon series with a tribute to William Byrd (c.1540-1623), marking the quadricentennial of his death. Though among the most celebrated and influential composers of his day, in one way Byrd was an outsider to the mainstream: he was a Catholic in the wake of the rupture of the Church of England from Rome. Byrd is the Wyrd features some of Byrd’s most important contributions to both the Anglican and Catholic liturgical music repertories, including the Mass for Four Voices, and the Magnificat from the Great Service.

William Byrd: Mass for Four Voices
Retire my Soul
O Lord, make thy servant Elizabeth
Ye Sacred Muses
Sing Joyfully
Magnificat (from the Great Service)

All Souls’ Episcopal Church
1475 Catalina Blvd, San Diego, CA 92107

Bach’s Motets
The Singers’ Favorite!
The Bach Motets, featuring BWV 225–230

Sunday, November 12, 2023 at 4:00 P.M.
National Presbyterian Church
Washington, DC

Audiences love to hear any one of Bach’s iconic motets in a live performance, but to hear all of them in one evening is a revelation. Bach’s vocal-ensemble writing is legendary among singers, artfully bringing to life the rhetorical substance of his musical and theological convictions. A valuable part of Bach’s oeuvre, the motets together capture the full range of connection between text, music, and faith.

Join us for Talking Bach at 3 p.m. The series of free pre-concert lectures by noted Bach scholar, Michael Marissen, are presented one hour before Director’s Series performances.

Handel | Solomon

Sarah Nelson Craft, mezzo-soprano (Solomon)
Sonya Headlam, soprano (Solomon's Queen)
Elisse Albian, soprano (Queen of Sheba)
Gregório Taniguchi, tenor (Zadok)
Harrison Hintzsche, baritone (Levite)

NOVEMBER 5, 2023
4:00 P.M.
Pre-concert talk at 3:00 p.m.

Richardson Auditorium
Princeton University

I Will Tell You The Truth About This, I Will Tell You All About It
an oratorio, world premiere

This 50-minute work, adapted by composer Aaron Siegel from poems by former U.S. Poet Laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winning Tracy K. Smith, highlights the lost voices and stories of African American soldiers who fought in the Civil War. Featuring the chamber trio Longleash and a chamber choir led by soprano Michele Kennedy

The concert opens with a reading of the featured texts by poet Tracy K. Smith

Thursday, November 2, 2023, 7:30PM
Merkin Hall
Kaufman Music Center
Abraham Goodman House
129 West 67th Street
(btw Broadway and Amsterdam)
New York, NY 10023

Oregon Bach Festival
Joby Talbot | Path of Miracles
Sun, Jul 2, 2023 at 2:30 pm
Beall Concert Hall

Join the OBF Chorus for a pilgrimage along the iconic Camino de Santiago. The contemporary choral work dramatizes the religious trek from the Pyrenees to Santiago de Compostela and the final resting place of Saint James. Conducted by Grammy-winner Craig Hella Johnson, Joby Talbot’s Path of Miracles beautifully balances “excitement, doubt, revelation, fear, and triumph” (Second Inversion).

Charlotte Mundy, soprano
Elisa Sutherland, mezzo soprano
Timothy Parsons, countertenor
Gregório Taniguchi, tenor
Jeffrey Gavett, baritone and director
Steven Hrycelak, bass

Corie Rose Soumah – New Work (2023) World Premiere
Katherine Balch – forgetting (2021) Live Premiere
Joshua Alvarez Mastel – animal (2021) Live Premiere
Erin Gee – Mouthpiece XXXVI (2021)
Mathias Spahlinger – verfluchung (1983/85) US Premiere

May 23 2023 at 7:30PM, at DiMenna Center’s Cary Hall, Ekmeles sings Verfluchung, a program featuring a world premiere by Corie Rose Soumah, the live premieres two works only previously recorded by Joshua Alvarez Mastel and Katherine Balch, a recent Ekmeles commission by Erin Gee, and the title work: a monumental trio by Mathias Spahlinger.

Mathias Spahlinger’s verfluchung is a searing 30 minute tour de force for three vocalists playing small wooden percussion. The title translates to a ‘cursing’, and Li Tai-Pei’s text ‘cursed be war, cursed be the work of weapons’ is intoned, broken apart, and repeated endlessly, in a powerful cry for peace. The titanic structure of the piece is built on prime numbers, especially twin primes, separated by two. E.g. 107 and 109.

Joshua Alvarez Mastel’s animal takes a fragile and intimate soundworld of subtle vocalization, and makes it mechanically intense via the means of close amplification. The composer’s performance note for the piece implores the singers to ‘focus their performance inwardly, as if singing to each other in a darkened cellar’. Gossamer threads of voice at the edge of control are gently passed back and forth across the ensemble in space, with each voice placed in a single speaker surrounding the audience.

Corie Rose Soumah’s New Work will explore aspects of her biracial identity, and will feature immersive, uninterrupted electronics throughout, making use of a complex 6-speaker setup surrounding the audience.

Katherine Balch’s forgetting takes as its text an excerpt from Katie Ford’s Estrangement, dealing with forgetting as a labor and a practice, a kind of inverse of learning. Stuttering and whispered vocal figures are complemented by the clicking of toy ratchets played by each member of the ensemble. The work grows toward a gentle chorale, only to be overwhelmed by the crescendo of the ratchets.

Finally Erin Gee’s Mouthpiece XXXVI, written for Ekmeles after working with the composer to record her Three Scenes from Sleep, and with the support of a Chamber Music America Classical Commissioning Grant, skitters and pops along with Gee’s idiosyncratic and idiomatic vocal gestures. Despite the unfamiliar materials, the subtle play of repetition and variation draws the listener forward through the intricate web of voices.

Clarion Choir
Steven Fox, conductor
Mikki Sodergren, mezzo-soprano
John Ramseyer, tenor

5 May, 2023 8.00pm
Stern Auditorium/Perlman Stage
Carnegie Hall
881 7th Avenue
New York, NY 10019

The 'Vespers' is often considered Rachmaninoff's greatest choral work, and the composer requested that part of the piece be performed at his own funeral. Following the release of The Clarion Choir's recording of the work on January 27, 2023, the Choir performs it on the stage where the composer himself performed as a pianist and conductor more than 80 times.

Cornell University Choirs
Major Works Concert
Saturday, April 29, 2023
7:30 PM
Bailey Hall

Join us in Bailey Hall for our Major Works Concert in collaboration with the Cornell University Glee Club and Cornell Symphony Orchestra. The concert will feature Mozart's Requiem, Schubert's Unfinished Symphony D.759, and Arvo Pärt's Da Pacem Domine. Free advance tickets for the concert can be reserved at the link. Livestream information will be posted closer to the date of the concert.

Arcadian Academy
Thursday, April 27 at 7:00 pm

The Italian Academy at Columbia University
1161 Amsterdam Avenue
Manhattan

Enrico Gatti returns to lead a concert re-creating the musical splendor of the Arcadian Academy of Rome, whose leading composers were Bernardo Pasquini, Arcangelo Corelli, and Alessandro Scarlatti. The program features the North American premiere of Pasquini’s festive cantata Applauso Musicale with concerto grosso orchestra and soloists Sarah Chalfy, Laura Heimes, and Clara Rottsolk, sopranos; Gregório Taniguchi, tenor; and Steven Hrycelak, bass with additional music by Corelli and Scarlatti. Instrumental soloists will be Enrico Gatti and Cynthia Freivogel, violins, and Loretta O’Sullivan, cello.

Thursday, April 20, 7:30 pm
Vicente Lusitano and his contemporaries

Bi-racial composer Vicente Lusitano, referred to as a “pardo” (Portuguese for mulatto), is believed to have been born to a white father and a Black mother in Portugal sometime around 1522. He was ordained as a Catholic priest, spent time in Rome, and environs where he became a well-respected music teacher and accomplished theorist. Lusitano wrote a treatise on improvising counterpoint which is believed to be one of the most thorough and detailed methods but was consistently overlooked by musicologists. It was also not possible for Lusitano (given his ethnicity) to secure the support of a patron which made it quite difficult for him to achieve the status he envisioned for his career. At some point in 1556 he converted to Protestantism, ended up in Württemberg, got married and sought refuge with Christoph, Duke of Württemberg and that is the last we hear of him. We will explore his vocal works along with the composers he may have encountered along the way.

The Church of St. Luke in the Fields
487 Hudson Street
Greenwich Village
NYCAdmission is $25 adults; $10 Students and Seniors.

January 31, 2023 | 7:30 PM
Roulette Intermedium

SONGS TO THE UNKNOWN

An exploration of singing as way of connecting ourselves to something larger that our individual selves, featuring Hannah Selin’s “…and we fly away” (world premiere)

Program to include works by Caroline Shaw, Melissa Dunphy, Marques Garrett, Reena Esmail, David Ludwig, and Orlando Gibbons

Notes from Ukraine
A 100-Year Celebration of Carol of the Bells
Carnegie Hall [Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage]
New York, NY

Ukrainian Children's Choir Shchedryk
Ukrainian Chorus Dumka of New York
Ukrainian Bandurist Chorus of North America
Choir of Trinity Wall Street
Special Guests: Janai Bruegger & Marichka Marczyk

The Ukrainian Children’s Choir Shchedryk, Ukrainian Chorus Dumka of New York (as seen on SNL), and Ukrainian Bandurist Chorus of North America will perform "Carol of the Bells", other traditional Ukrainian Christmas songs, and contemporary choral works. The second half of the program will feature the Choir of Trinity Wall Street performing Ukrainian works influenced by English traditions and American composers with ties to Ukraine. The concert will close with a world premiere by composer Trevor Weston, setting the words of Ukrainian poet Serhiy Zhadan.

Schütz: Musikalische Exequien
Los Angeles Master Chorale
Walt Disney Concert Hall
Los Angeles, CA

Grant Gershon, conductor
Peter Sellars, director
Alice Goodman
James F. Ingalls, lighting designer
Danielle Domingue Sumi, costume designer
Pamela Salling, stage manager
24 singers, continuo

Following their widely acclaimed collaboration on Lagrime di San Pietro, Peter Sellars, Grant Gershon and singers of the Los Angeles Master Chorale reunite with a deeply personal meditation on what it means to say goodbye in times of struggle. The luminous music of the Baroque composer Heinrich Schütz’s serves as the inspiration for this ceremony of remembrance and devotion.

Carnegie Hall, Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
New York, NY

FOSS Ode
FOSS Three American Pieces
FOSS Renaissance Concerto
FOSS Psalms
THOMPSON Alleluia
FOSS Symphony No. 1

Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra
The Choir of Trinity Wall Street
Downtown Voices
JoAnn Falletta, Conductor
Nikki Chooi, Violin
Amy Porter, Flute

Composer, pianist, teacher, and author Lukas Foss played a part in shaping the sound of 20th century American music. A kindred spirit of Bernstein, Foss was the Music Director of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra from 1963 to 1970. Under Music Director JoAnn Falletta, the Grammy-winning orchestra celebrates Lukas Foss’s centennial and features The Choir of Trinity Wall Street and Downtown Voices in a rarely performed all Foss program.

Roulette Intermedium
Brooklyn, NY

Voices of The New presented the world premiere of Orbits by Will Healy & spoken-word artist spiritchild, performed by ShoutHouse and the Voices of Ascension Singers. The concert, melding hip-hop, jazz, and classical music, featured a set of songs from ShoutHouse; a performance of New York Revisited, Healy’s latest work for chorus; and a new choral arrangement of RaShonda Reeves’ “A Day with Mae” from Astronautica: Voices of Women in Space.

Lux Aeterna
Downtown Voices
St. Paul’s Chapel
New York, NY

Duruflé | Requiem
Fauré | Requiem

Lux Aeterna celebrates the persistence of light through times of darkness. Trinity's semiprofessional choir, Downtown Voices, presents this illuminating spring concert—the ensemble's first in-person performance since early 2020—performing masterpiece requiems of solace and beauty by Duruflé and Fauré. Watch on-demand here.